I run the Drucker Institute, a social enterprise based at Claremont Graduate University. Our mission is to strengthen society by making individuals more effective, organizations more responsible and work more joyful. We do this by turning Peter Drucker's ideas and ideals into tools that are both practical and inspiring. I've been writing "The Drucker Difference" column since 2007, first at Businessweek and now at Forbes. (You can see my earlier columns by clicking here.) McGraw-Hill published a collection of my columns in 2011 under the title What Would Drucker Do Now? I'm also the editor of Drucker: A Life in Pictures (McGraw-Hill, 2013) and The Drucker Lectures: Essential Lessons on Management, Society, and Economy (McGraw-Hill 2010). Before joining the Drucker Institute, I spent 20 years as a reporter, editor and columnist at The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. I am also the author of two books of narrative history: The King of California: J.G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire and Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. I've done a few other things in my professional life and serve on a few boards, as well. If you want to know more about that stuff, you can find my full bio here. And you can always reach me here.

Who Has the Most Influence at Your Company? Hint: It's Probably Not the Person You're Thinking Of

When Peter Drucker began writing about the shape of American business shortly after World War II, he described workplaces that were built upon “a hierarchy of skills and functions,” as well as “a hierarchy of command.” But Drucker was also quick to recognize that people often don’t operate within these lines.

In every enterprise, “there is an ‘informal’ social organization of the workers,” Drucker explained in his 1950 book The New Society: The Anatomy of Industrial Order. “It is this informal organization, rather than management, which actually determines rates of output, standards, job classification and job content.”

You don’t have to tell Bill McKinney just how insightful this observation was.

About 18 months ago, the vice president of talent and strategic development at Thrivent Financial for Lutherans asked his team of 50 employees to adopt a new planning procedure for innovation. The idea was for them to document the major steps they’d taken on a given project before moving on to the next phase—a “stage-gating” system designed to help them ramp up their new initiatives.

The trouble was, few complied with the process, dubbed Discovery Driven Planning, or DDP. Some on McKinney’s staff filled out the paperwork incompletely. Many ignored it altogether.

Such lackadaisical behavior wasn’t a reflection of McKinney’s own passion for the undertaking. He and another senior executive “were pounding the table a lot,” trying to get people to follow the guidelines, he recalls.

Frustrated, McKinney decided to see if he could figure out why DDP wasn’t getting any traction. For assistance, he harnessed a computer program that Thrivent had originally used to help those in its sales force map their own personal networks. By carefully diagraming people they know—and whom, in turn, those folks know—Thrivent’s financial advisers are able to more quickly tap key relationships that can drive business.

This time, McKinney aimed the tool inward. Guided by a software and services company called Keyhubs, he asked his employees a series of questions: To whom would you go if you wanted to better understand the DDP process? Whom would you ask if you needed help creating a new business model? To whom do you turn if you want to learn about industry trends? Who helps you understand what’s happening within Thrivent? With whom do you socialize?

In each case, an employee could pick up to three names from within the 50-person unit; everyone was listed in a dropdown menu in alphabetical order, without any regard to a person’s title.

Keyhubs then analyzed the results. The company produces maps that illustrate how many people in an organization look to particular individuals for advice or social interaction; the more arrows pointing in someone’s direction, the more power and sway he or she likely has.

At Thrivent, three bubbles on the map had a disproportionate number of arrows coming their way. No names were attached. McKinney immediately deduced who two of them were: himself and Chris, another top manager in his area. The third one, though, stumped him. He offered up several possibilities, including a couple of vice presidents in his shop. Each guess was wrong.

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